


holding out for a hero

by allidon



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst and Feels, First Kiss, M/M, Self-Discovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-10
Updated: 2018-11-10
Packaged: 2019-08-21 16:50:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16580324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allidon/pseuds/allidon
Summary: Theo accidentally develops a cult following among some local children. Liam thinks it’s kind of cute. Theo doesn’t know how to handle it.





	holding out for a hero

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LovelyLittleGrim](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LovelyLittleGrim/gifts).



> For Amanda, who a million years ago prompted [this](http://lovelylittlegrim.tumblr.com/post/173059294437)
> 
> I kind of took it and ran with it - hope you like it!

There are three things that Liam appreciates about Sundays: lie-ins, his mother’s pancakes, and binge-watching obscure documentaries in peace.

None of which are compatible with the insistent knocking at the front door which drags him out of sleep. He tries to ignore it at first, turning over with a groan and pulling his pillow over his head to drown it out, but whoever it is just hammers even harder.

When it becomes clear that neither of his parents is here to answer it, he flips back his duvet with a growl and a muttered curse, pulling on a shirt and rubbing at his eyes as he stomps downstairs and yanks the door open.

“What—?” he bites out, intending to berate whoever it is for interrupting his sleep, but then cuts himself off as surprise registers instead. He’d been expecting a salesperson, or maybe one of the neighbours about some community group or other that they want Jenna to help with, but instead he finds himself face to face with an antsy-looking Theo, flushed and slightly out of breath as if he’s just finished a long run.

“Took you long enough.”

“Theo?” Liam says, torn between residual annoyance and the now-familiar thrill of anticipation he seems to get whenever he’s around the chimera these days. “What are you doing here?”

“Never mind that,” Theo hisses, chancing a quick look over his shoulder. “Quick, let me in.”

Liam frowns a little, but moves aside to let Theo pass while sneaking a quick glance down the street. He can’t see anything untoward, nothing that should have caused Theo to be so anxious to get inside. He closes the door, and turns to find the hallway empty behind him. He tips his head to the side, listening for Theo’s heartbeat. It’s slowing back down to its normal rhythm, but there’s a lingering scent of irritation that Theo’s left in his wake. Liam follows him to the kitchen, and finds him leaning against the counter with his arms loosely crossed. He’s feigning indifference, but his trademark smirk is noticeably absent.

“What’s going on?” Liam asks him from the doorway. It’s not as if Theo’s an infrequent visitor at Liam’s house, but even by Theo’s usual standards his behaviour is...weird. Twitchy. And again, far too early in the morning for _Liam’s_ standards.

Theo scowls. “Nothing,” he mutters at the floor. His fingers flex where they’re curled around his bicep and Liam’s mouth goes inexplicably dry.

“ _Nothing_?” he says incredulously, and then swallows when his voice comes out a little too thin. “Nothing is the reason you apparently ran all the way here, and then pounded on the door and _woke me up_ at nine-thirty on a Sunday morning?”

“Sorry to disturb your beauty sleep,” Theo drawls. It’s deceptively careless, the mocking curl of his mouth almost unnoticeable. “I’ll remember to schedule my problems with more consideration for nap time in the future.”

“So there _is_ a problem?” Liam says, ignoring Theo’s attempts to distract him with their usual brand of teasing. “What is it?”

“It’s nothing,” Theo insists again, but his cheeks have gone pink, and his heart is still beating just a touch too fast.

“ _Riii-ght_ ,” Liam says, stretching the word out to indicate just how much he doesn’t believe Theo’s far-too-obvious lie, and then turns and marches back towards the front door, grinning a little as he hears Theo scrambling to follow him.

“Liam, don’t—” he protests, catching up just as Liam pulls the door open again and takes another look outside. He tries to push the door closed, but Liam wedges his shoulder into the opening as he starts to get an inkling as to exactly what Theo’s problem is.

It just doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense.

“Theo, why is there a crowd of kids on the driveway?” Liam asks, unable to hide his amusement as he steps back into the house and the door slams shut under Theo’s weight.

“Oh,” Theo says, awkwardly taking a couple of steps backwards and scratching at the back of his neck. “ _That_.”

“Yeah,” Liam says. “That. Well?”

Theo sighs, and finally meets Liam’s eyes. “I think that I may have...accidentally started a cult?” The tips of his ears have turned red, darker than the colour in his cheeks. Liam finds it oddly adorable.

“A cult?” Liam repeats, bemused. _That’s a new one._ “Worshipping what, exactly?”

“Well…um. Me?” That last word is painfully uncertain, like Theo doesn't quite believe it himself.

Liam blinks at him. “Care to explain in a little more detail?”

“It was no big deal,” Theo says defensively. “I don’t even know how it happened.”

“Well something obviously did.” Theo goes back to staring stubbornly at the floor, and Liam rolls his eyes. “Ok, well let’s go and ask _them_ then,” he says, opening the door and slipping out before Theo has a chance to stop him.

The crowd at the end of his driveway has swelled to a total of ten kids now, gathered around a skinny girl with shoulder length dark hair, wearing a faded My Little Pony t-shirt and leaning against a purple bike with tassels on the handles. Most of the others fall back towards the sidewalk a little as Liam approaches. Liam initially takes it as a courtesy, but then reconsiders given that the apparent ringleader peers right around him when Liam stops in front of her. Maybe it’s actually just that Liam’s not all that interesting to them.

“Where’s Theo?” she asks, a slight lisp coming through the gap between her front teeth.

“Inside,” Liam says, nodding back towards the house. “I’m Liam,” he adds, holding his hand out for her to shake. “What’s your name?”

She narrows her eyes at him. “I’m not s’posed to talk to strangers.”

“Really?” Liam says. He lets his unshaken hand fall back to his side. “Well, you’re kind of on my driveway. I think that makes us not-strangers.”

She considers this for a moment, and then turns to the group of kids behind her. There’s a mixture of nodding and shaking of heads, and then she looks back at Liam. “Ava.”

Liam grins. “Nice to meet you, Ava. So, now that we’re friends—” She raises an eyebrow at him, apparently unimpressed. It reminds him bizarrely of Theo. “Ok, not friends. Acquaintances, then?”

She scrunches up her nose. “I don’t know what that means.”

“It—Never mind. Why do you want to find Theo so badly?”

“Because he’s a superhero,” she says, matter-of-factly. There’s a ripple of excited giggles from the other kids.

Liam has to choke back a laugh. “You think Theo is a superhero?”

She crosses her arms, and fixes him with a steely glare. “I _know_ he is.”

It takes Liam a minute to process. He doesn’t have a lot of direct experience with kids, just the occasional visit from his younger cousins and stuff he’s picked up from his mom when she talks about work over dinner, but he knows enough to be fairly certain that nine-year-olds aren’t generally prone to deciding that random people are superheroes. Especially Theo, who seems to expend a ridiculous amount of energy giving off the opposite impression.

He tries again, deliberately stripping the disbelief from his voice. “How do you know that?”

Her expression drops into something rather more scornful. “ _Because_.”

For a brief moment, Liam thinks that might be her entire justification and he’s not sure where to go from there. Luckily for him, her excitement gets the better of her: she takes a breath and holds it until her face is almost purple, and then it’s almost as if something bursts and then the words just tumble out in a continuous stream of excited chatter.  

“Last week I was walking home from school and Joey was being mean to me and he tried to take my backpack and I was yelling at him to stop and then he pushed me and then Theo came _out of nowhere_ and he made a scary face at Joey and made him pee his pants and now Joey won’t come near me anymore because I have a superhero and he’s my best friend.”

She stops long enough to take another breath, and Liam cuts in, trying to hide his disbelief. “Your best friend? _Theo_?”

Her face explodes into a ridiculous grin, and she pulls herself a little taller. “Yep.”

“And who’s Joey?”

“Only the meanest kid in the _whole school_ ,” one of the other kids says from behind her.

“And this is why you guys have been following Theo?”

Ava nods eagerly, and another of the kids, a short boy with curly hair poking out of the sides of his baseball cap, pipes up: “We want to see if he can fly.”

“No, he can’t fly, silly,” says another boy, taller and with ears slightly too big for his face. “He can only have one super power.”

“His scary face,” Ava supplies. “That’s his super power.”

“He can have other powers,” says a different girl, a dusting of freckles over her nose and blonde hair pulled into a tight braid. “Like Superman. He has laser eyes _and_ he can fly.”

“So,” the curly-haired boy says to Liam. “Can Theo fly?”

Liam can see now why Theo’s so freaked out—this kind of adoration is a lot to take, and Theo’s notoriously uncomfortable with positive attention—but honestly he thinks the whole thing is actually pretty sweet. Theo’s obviously made an impression on Ava, and her friends by extension, and Liam is not inclined to put an end to it.

On the contrary, he thinks it might actually work to his advantage.

“Well,” Liam says slowly, taking a look back at his house while he pretends to think it over. He’s pretty sure he catches a glimpse of Theo watching from the living room window, and he crouches down so that he’s level with the kids’ faces, meaning that he can talk even more quietly just in case Theo’s listening in. “I’d have to know I can trust you guys, right?” They all nod, wide-eyed and eager, and he leans in closer. “See, I’m letting you in on a _big_ secret.”

“We’re good at secrets,” says the girl with the freckles, and the others make murmurs of agreement.

“Ok,” Liam says. “Well, he can’t fly—” He stops as there’s a chorus of disappointed noises, and then continues: “But you’re right. He _is_ a superhero.”

“I _knew_ it,” Ava breathes out.

“Yeah,” Liam nods. “And his superhero mission is to scare away mean people so that he can protect kids like you. But if too many people know, then the bullies might find out too. And then he wouldn’t be able to scare them anymore. So, you guys need to help me protect Theo, ok?”

The kids agree in a giggling chorus of _yeah_ and _ok_ , and Liam grins. “Ok then. Here’s what I need you to do.”

*

“They’re gone,” he tells Theo when he gets back inside. The kids had been surprisingly open to dispersing once he’d confirmed their superhero suspicions and asked them to maybe not be quite so obvious about it. He’s feeling pretty impressed with himself, actually.

Theo is hovering at the living room window, just as Liam had suspected, and he takes another look out at the driveway before he turns to face Liam. “What did they tell you?” It’s hesitant, almost cautious. Like he’s not really sure what Liam’s reaction is going to be.

Liam shrugs. “The truth. That you scared away a bully and now they think you’re Wolverine or something.” He grins, hoping to lighten Theo’s mood a little.

He just scowls at Liam instead. “You’re hilarious.”

“C’mon,” Liam says, keeping his tone deliberately light in an attempt to hide his confusion. For all it’s become clearer what happened, he’s still not sure quite why Theo is so bothered by it. “They’re sweet. They just want to see if you do something else cool.”

Theo makes a face.  “They should be terrified of me.”

“My mom says kids never see things the way adults think they should,” Liam says with another grin. “And you stood up to someone that everyone else is afraid of. Of course they’re gonna think you’re awesome.”

“This wasn’t supposed to happen,” Theo says, his voice tight and frustrated. He sounds almost helpless, except for the fact that Liam can’t imagine that word ever describing Theo. “It was one time. One kid. It shouldn’t have been a big deal. But she started showing up everywhere. And then next thing I know they’re all following me around like—like ducklings!” Liam snorts, and Theo glares at him. “It’s not funny!”

“It’s kinda funny.”

“It is not. I can’t go anywhere now without a trail of kids following me.”

“So? They’re just kids.”

“Easy for you to say,” Theo says, turning away slightly. There’s something familiar about the way his shoulders are curled in just slightly, the muted scent of something that’s almost sadness but not quite, the thin line of his mouth, but Liam can’t quite place it. It puts him on edge either way, leaving him with an uncertain kind of discomfort that he’s not sure how to resolve.

Except by getting angry, which is why there’s a sharpness to his voice that he doesn’t actively intend when he asks, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Theo’s mouth goes even thinner. “Nothing. It’s—it’s fine. Just leave it.”

“No, come on,” Liam protests. “I don’t get the issue—do you, like, hate kids or something?”

“What? No, that’s not—” His face goes hard, for the briefest second, before softening again. “I don’t hate kids, Liam.”

“Then what?” He can hear the frustration in his own voice but can’t seem to reign it in somehow. “You ran here like you were being chased by your worst nightmares, and it turns out to be a bunch of nine-year-olds who pretty much just wanted your autograph.”

The corner of Theo’s mouth twitches. “It was selfies, actually,” he says, amusement mixed in with a fraction of his usual confidence. “With the dog filter.”

Liam winces. “Definitely don’t do that.”

“Yeah, no shit.”

“So what then?” Liam pushes, returning to his previous question undeterred. “If you don’t hate them—and it can’t be that you’re afraid. Why are you hiding from them in my house?”

“I’m just—” Theo starts to say, and then cuts himself off as he rubs his fingers across his hairline and then tugs them through his hair. “I’m not good with kids, ok? It’s not safe for me to be around them.”

“How can you possibly know that?” Liam asks with barely contained disbelief. “What do you think’s gonna happen?”

Theo stares at him as if he’s lost his mind. “Every kid I’ve ever met is dead,” he says bluntly. “Most of them because of me.”

Liam’s not sure if it’s Theo’s flat emotionless tone or the actual statement that hits him like a sucker punch, but looking at Theo’s expectant face he gets the distinct impression that either way it was Theo’s precise intention to draw exactly that reaction from him. To horrify. To prove himself right in one easy step.

It almost works, except that if there’s one thing Liam hates it’s when Theo gets one over on him. So he carefully arranges his face into something that he hopes masks the horror that’s washing over him in an icy wave as the full impact of Theo’s words starts to sink in, and says: “That was different. That was—it was before.”

Before Theo came back. Before he started to change for the better. Before he became a part of Liam’s pack, without either of them intending for it to happen.

Before Liam— He pushes that thought away before it fully forms.

Theo’s still staring at him, his eyebrows pulled together deep enough to create a line between them. “That doesn’t change—”

“It’s _different_ ,” Liam repeats, determined not to lose ground. “Besides,” he adds with a triumphant grin as something else occurs to him. “If you’re so sure that you shouldn’t be around kids, why are you going around scaring off bullies for them?”

“It was _one_ time,” Theo insists again. His voice is strained, his face still somewhere between confusion and frustration. “And I didn’t expect him to scare so easily—all I did was growl at him a little.”

“Still doesn’t make sense for you to get involved at all.”

“I just hate kids like that. They always pick on people they think won’t fight back.”

“Like Ava?”

“Yeah,” Theo says quietly, and then after a pause he adds: “And me.”

Liam blinks in surprise. “ _You_ got bullied?”

He’s not sure why he finds it quite so surprising but he does: he can’t imagine either the Theo he knows now or the one he’d known before ever allowing himself to appear so vulnerable. It’s probably a stupid assumption, really. It’s not as if Theo didn’t have a childhood of some kind before the Doctors took him, but somehow Liam’s just never really thought about what sort of kid Theo might have been back then.

Until now, when he’s faced with Theo staring him down, his shoulders squared and his chin raised defensively. “Of course I did,” Theo says, as if it’s obvious. “I was small, and I had asthma so I couldn’t run as fast as the other kids. I was an easy target. Tara used to—” An awful, haunted expression takes over his face, and he snaps his mouth shut so abruptly that Liam winces at the sound of his teeth clacking together.

He’s never heard Theo refer to his sister by her name before.

Theo’s mouth stretches into a thin and unnerving smile that looks almost macabre, but Liam can only hear quiet sadness when he speaks. “I wasn’t always like this, you know?”

Liam doesn’t quite know what Theo means by _this_ , but he at least has the good sense to stop and think. Because he hadn’t, before now. Hadn’t thought about how Theo had been a kid once too. Hadn’t thought about exactly how the Doctors had been able to manipulate him, how they’d found it so easy to get into his head.

He hadn’t thought, because somehow he never quite seems to think enough.

“Hey, I’m sorry, ok? I didn’t mean—I just didn’t expect that. You’re always so...so…”

His mind grapples for a word to fully encompass everything he admires about Theo. Resilient. Confident. Strong.

Everything that a year ago had made him the biggest threat the pack had ever faced.

 _Formidable_.

Everything that intrigues Liam now instead, makes his fingers itch for something he doesn’t quite understand yet. Makes him _want_.

He doesn’t know what it is exactly, this whatever-it-is that’s growing between them. It’s comfortable somehow, familiar, and yet the intensity of it is terrifying. It’s like he’s standing at the top of a waterfall and the water is warm and still, lulling him into a false sense of security as it laps gently against his legs when all the while the undercurrent is threatening to push him over the edge before he’s quite ready to jump.

(He doesn’t know when he started thinking in metaphors either. He thinks maybe that’s Theo’s fault too.)

Theo’s eyes narrow dangerously as he waits for Liam’s judgement. They look almost grey, like storm clouds brewing. Liam’s brain short circuits. Ok, and maybe Theo still scares him a little.

“ _Hot_ ,” Liam blurts out, and then claps his hand over his mouth with a particularly undignified yelp.

Theo blinks at him, his mouth opening and then closing again without making a sound. Sadly, Liam can’t even enjoy the satisfaction of catching the chimera off guard for once, because he’s far too aware of the heat creeping up his own neck and colouring his cheeks and the way that his heart is pounding.

He could swear that Theo’s is too, but the chimera’s showing little sign of noticing because he seems too busy trying to make a word come out of his still-startled mouth. “What—?”

“No!” Liam cuts in. His voice comes out in a much higher pitch than he intended, and it only makes his face burn more fiercely. “That’s not—I didn’t mean—”

“Liam—“

“Well, it’s not that you’re _not_ hot,” Liam continues on resolutely. “Of course you—I was just trying to say that—”

“ _Liam_ ,” Theo says again. He seems to have gotten over his initial shock, because now he’s watching with amusement as Liam babbles. “It’s ok, I get it,” he says. “I mean, it’s true. I am kinda hot.” And there it is, that smirk that Liam had been missing earlier.

It makes him want to punch Theo in the face.

“Asshole,” he mutters, willing the colour in his face to fade.

“Maybe,” Theo grins. “But a hot asshole, right?”

“ _No_ ,” Liam huffs. “Just an insufferable _ass_.”

“Whatever you say Little Wolf,” Theo says. There’s a sudden airy dismissiveness to his tone that Liam hadn’t expected. “Anyway, places to be. Thanks for saving me from the Attack of the Grade Schoolers.”

He moves towards the front door before Liam can fully process his words, patting Liam’s shoulder as he passes. Liam turns slowly to watch as he reaches the door, his mind still catching up with the disaster that just happened.

Theo’s almost closing the door behind him when he stops, and pokes his head back into the house. “Hey, for the record? I think you’re pretty cute too.”

He’s gone before Liam can formulate a reply.

*

Liam doesn’t see Theo again until the following weekend. It’s not unusual in itself—Theo’s prone to dropping off the radar every now and then—but Liam would be lying if he said he wasn’t at least a little disappointed. They’ve had this strange push-pull thing going on for months now, dancing around each other with just enough distance to allow for plausible deniability whenever one of their friends tries to call them out on it, but Liam’s ill-thought-out admission the he finds Theo attractive and Theo returning the compliment is probably the closest they’ve ever come to acknowledging it out loud. Liam can’t help but worry that maybe it has something to do with Theo’s most recent absence.

It’s late on Saturday afternoon, and Liam’s walking home from the grocery store when he passes by the skate park and then does a double take. Over at the back, where the beginners usually start, is a tall figure in a backwards baseball cap, surround by Ava and three of the other kids from the group on Liam’s driveway the previous weekend. They’re all wearing their hats in the same way, and they’re watching intently as Theo shows them how to balance on their boards—first demonstrating it himself and then adjusting their feet and posture on by one until they take it in turns to attempt the very easiest ramp while Theo and the others cheer them on. Liam’s not sure what might have happened to change Theo’s mind since last weekend, but whatever it is it seems to have worked wonders. Theo’s face is lit up like Liam’s never seen before, and he smiles even wider as each of the kids hits him with a high-five when they finally succeed without toppling. Liam finds himself smiling too, without really meaning to.

He’s about to head home before Theo catches him watching, when Ava spots him instead. She waves enthusiastically and then points him out to Theo, who noticeably tenses up and then turns to look at Liam with his eyebrows pulled tight enough to create a line between them. Liam hovers for a second, trying to weigh up the least worst option now that he’s been seen, and then heads over to Theo and the kids. Theo seems to relax a little as he approaches, and by the time Liam reaches them the frown has been replaced by a careful half-smile.

“Liam!” Ava exclaims excitedly. Her t-shirt today is bright pink with a pineapple motif made up of gold sequins, and her face is flushed nearly the same colour as the fabric. They must have been practicing for a while before Liam got here. “Theo’s showing us how to do tricks. Wanna see?”

“Absolutely,” Liam says, even though he’s already seen them all fall multiple times and then finally complete it. She grins and grabs her board before racing over to the starting point they’ve been using, and Liam sidles a little closer to Theo.

“So, this is where you’ve been hiding all week then?”

Theo shoots him a sideways glance. “No, Liam,” he says slowly. “I’ve been working all week. Y’know, so that I can buy gas, and maybe even some food once in a while?”

“Ohhh,” Liam breathes out, feeling more than a little silly for having been so worried. “I just thought…”

“What?” Theo asks, his eyes still on Ava as she completes the ramp perfectly. He lets out a whoop, and then turns to Liam, eyebrow raised.

“I was worried you were avoiding me,” Liam says in a rush, and then hits Ava’s offered high-five as she runs back over.

Theo frowns at him again, but doesn’t answer as he turns his attention back to the kids who are clamouring for his attention. He starts teaching them another trick, laying the board upside down over their toes so that when they jump up it flips over onto its wheels. When Theo demonstrates he makes it look easy, his feet landing perfectly on the board every time. When the kids try it for themselves the results are more of a mixed bag, but they don’t seem to mind: they burst into giggles each time they miss their own landing, and into applause when one of the others manages to hit theirs. Liam stands back to watch, hugging his paper bag of slowly warming groceries.

His mom is probably going to kill him, but he thinks it might be worth it.

“Liam!” Ava calls over. “You have a try!”

“Me?” he squeaks out. “No, that’s fine. You just—carry on.”

“What’s wrong Liam?” Theo asks. There’s a mischievous grin twitching at the corner of his mouth. “Scared they’ll see I’m better at it than you?”

Liam can just about guarantee that Theo is better at skateboarding than he is; he hasn’t even looked at a skateboard since he was nine years old, when he and Mason decided to become professional skateboarders after playing way too much Tony Hawk on Liam’s second-hand PlayStation. One afternoon at the skate park, and Liam had left with a broken wrist and scrapes on his knees that had been deep enough to leave scars, if he squinted. He’s had a firmly held belief ever since that he just doesn’t have the level of coordination required. A bit like dancing, really.

“C’mon Liam,” Theo says, all swagger now he’s got the upper hand. “Prove me wrong.”

He’s not sure what it is that convinces him—maybe that he doesn’t want to just let Theo win, or maybe that something about the way the kids are giggling and cheering is pretty infectious. Either way, he sets the groceries down on a bench—she’s really, _really_ going to kill him—and then moves back towards the ramps.

“You can use my board,” Theo tells him. “It’s not great, but it’s ok for messing around on.” He stands on the end of it as he talks, flipping it up so he can grab the other end. “Ready?” he asks, and doesn’t wait for an answer before letting the skateboard fall easily over Liam’s feet.

Liam looks down at it, trying to figure out exactly how the trick is supposed to work. The board is well used: the wheels are worn, and the decals are scratched and faded. He wonders how long Theo’s had it.

“You can do it Liam,” one of the kids shouts, to a round of encouraging cheers, and Liam glances back up at them. Theo and the kids have formed a messy and expectant semi-circle in front of him, and Liam has to swallow the urge to kick the board away. He takes a breath instead, and then before he can back out he jumps exactly how Theo had demonstrated before. The board flips, but it doesn’t land where Liam expects and so he barely catches the edge of it with his toes before stumbling backwards as he regains his balance. Thankfully, he at least manages not to fall on his ass, but he still feels a surge of embarrassment in his gut strong enough to need to clench his fists tightly to contain it.

When he looks back at them though, the kids are all grinning.

“You nearly had it,” Ava says. Liam smiles, quick and easy, and then looks up to meet Theo’s eyes.

“Nice try,” Theo says, and when Liam opens his mouth to bite out a retort he adds hurriedly: “I mean it. It took me two solid weeks to get the hang of it. I mean, I was eight but—” He breaks off to laugh as Liam shoves at his shoulder.

They spend another half-hour or so—the kids practicing the ramp some more, with Theo giving pointers and Liam providing moral support and steadfastly refusing to go near a skateboard _ever again_ —until the sky turns a little darker and the kids start to grab their things ready to go. They leave in a group, turning back to Theo and Liam to wave and call more goodbyes before heading away.

They stand awkwardly for a moment, Liam once again cradling the bag of groceries, and then Theo asks: “You heading home?”

“Yeah, I should probably—” Liam lifts the bag slightly to demonstrate.

“Cool, I’m heading that way. If you wanted to—y’know.” He makes a slightly awkward arm gesture back towards the sidewalk where Liam had been earlier.

Liam nods his acknowledgement, falling into step beside Theo as they reach the street and start walking in the direction of Liam’s house. Theo is carrying his skateboard under his arm; it looks strange and out of place there, but Liam is grateful for the gesture. The dusk comes in quickly as they walk, the air hot and muggy and the street stretching out in front of them in an endless blur of store fronts.

“I didn’t know you could skateboard,” Liam says after a while. It’s half genuine curiosity, half an excuse to break the silence that’s fallen between them.

“Scott knew,” Theo says, and then he looks at Liam with the edge of a mocking smile. “I thought you two shared everything.”  

There’s still a bitterness there, unmistakeable.

“I—” Liam starts, and then cuts himself off as he finds the barest recollection of a conversation that feels decades old. “I thought that story was a lie?”

Theo stops abruptly in front of a store window and turns slightly to face Liam more directly. He doesn’t answer for an uncomfortably long moment, scrutinising Liam’s face with a level of practiced disinterest that Liam learned to see past months ago. The harsh light from inside bathes him in an unnatural blue tinge and leaves him looking strangely ethereal, shadows highlighting the too-sharp contrast of his cheekbones. Liam wonders absently when he last ate anything substantial.

“The best lies are the ones that are actually true,” Theo says eventually. “I wasn’t lying about what happened.”

He does this, Liam’s noticed. Lays one card on the table, and then waits to gauge Liam’s reaction before deciding whether to show his whole hand. It’s meant Liam’s gotten a whole lot better at tempering his own responses, so that he has time to measure how he wants to proceed. To decide just how far he wants to dig.

Theo’s still watching him, his face inscrutable. It would be easy, Liam thinks, to leave the conversation in its infancy. He could nod and smile, they could walk on, they could never mention it again. But then the opportunity for this particular piece of information might never arise again, and Liam knows he would regret that more than whatever Theo could possibly tell him. He makes the decision and asks, voice soft and careful: “Just about him biting you?”

Theo makes a minute acknowledgment with his eyebrows. “About it being an accident.” It’s another card, the words carefully measured. His expression doesn’t change, still tracking Liam’s reaction.

Liam stares at him. “You—wanted him to find you?”

“He had information I needed,” Theo says with a shrug.

 _I_ , Liam notes. Not _they_. “What kind of information?”

Theo winces, almost unnoticeable if not for the way that his face is illuminated by the store lights. “They were getting ready to replace me. I needed an exit strategy.”

“Information about Beacon Hills,” Liam realises. “About Scott.”

“Yeah,” Theo says quietly.

Liam takes a step backwards, his heel balancing over the edge of the kerb. It’s hard, suddenly seeing shades of grey in all of Theo’s machinations back when he’d first arrived back in town. He’s been holding onto his anger about everything that happened—everything that Theo did—for so long, comfortable in the knowledge that he had the moral high ground, and now there’s something else jostling for space alongside it. He thinks it’s sadness maybe, or pity.

“How long?” he asks.

Theo blinks, like he’s surprised Liam’s still even there. “How long what?” His voice is quiet. Hoarse.

“How long did you plan it for? Before you came back?”

Theo thinks for a moment, chewing at the corner of his mouth. “Months. Maybe a year. But I always—I knew I would stop being useful eventually. It was just a matter of time.”

“But if you knew,” Liam says. “You could’ve—you could’ve just left? Ran away. You didn’t need to—”

“You think I didn’t try that?” Theo’s face twists, into something mean. “All those years, you think I never ran away?”

Liam’s chest hurts. “I—I don’t know?”

“I was a kid. About as old as them—” He gestures back in the direction of the park. “Of course I did. And they found me. Every time. Didn’t matter how far I got. So I got smart. I helped. I did the stuff they couldn’t. And it kept me alive.”

“Theo, I—”

Theo turns away. “Can we talk about something else?”

“Sure,” Liam agrees easily. Too easily maybe, but the conversation has taken a turn into something he’s really not sure how to handle. “Like what?”

Theo starts walking again without warning, and Liam has to take several quick steps to catch back up. Theo grins a little when Liam falls back into step with him, composure regained. It scares Liam a little how easily Theo pulls his mask back up, but then he supposes it’s the result of years of necessity. He’s only recently started to piece together just how all that time with the Doctors has shaped Theo into who he is today, linking it to words his mom has used about some of her hardest cases, to the tight anger in her voice when she can’t help as much as she would like.

He can’t imagine it: half a lifetime spent with your life held in the hands of monsters, every decision risking your safety, every desire swallowed down for fear of showing weakness. It’s astounding that Theo even made it out alive.

Or maybe it isn’t. Theo’s tenacity has never really been in question.

“Earth to Liam,” Theo says, somewhere to Liam’s right. There’s laughter in his voice, warm and familiar. “Did you hear what I said?”

“Yeah,” Liam says automatically, and then grimaces. “Sorry, I was just—what did you say?”

“I was asking,” Theo says lightly. “Why did you think I’d been avoiding you this week?” The casual tone of his voice is betrayed by the way he glances quickly at Liam’s face before looking away, his heartrate quickening slightly.

“Oh,” Liam says, and then stops. Considers. Decides. “Because of what I said. Before you left.”

Theo’s grin is lightning fast, there and gone in an instant before ever reaching his eyes. “What, that you think I’m hot? Hate to break it to you, but you’re not the first person to tell me that.”

Liam hadn’t expected otherwise, but somehow Theo’s dismissive tone burns anyway. He doesn’t understand why he bothered to bring it up if Liam’s foot-in-mouth incident concerned him so little. “So you weren’t avoiding me?” he asks. He sounds a little petulant, even to himself, but he thinks it’s well deserved. Surely they’ve come far enough to be honest with each other at least.

“Nope,” Theo says, drawing it out carelessly and popping over the _p_.

Theo’s a good liar, but even he can’t hide the skip in his heartbeat as he says it. Liam has a surge of satisfaction at the realisation that maybe he hadn’t been entirely wrong about it after all.

“So where have you been then?” he asks, after the briefest of hesitations. This is new territory. He’s never questioned Theo’s comings and goings before, but then Theo has never lied to him about them either. He doesn’t lie to Liam about anything, these days.

“I told you. I was working.”

“You work every week,” Liam points out. “You usually find the time. But you haven’t come over all week. Even my mom noticed.”

“Bullshit,” Theo says, almost instantly. “She did not.”

“She did,” Liam insists. “She asked where you were, and then she asked me what I did to piss you off.”

She’d had a full blown conversation with Liam about it, as it happens. Just in case he had done something stupid. Well, _thoughtless_ was the word she had used, but Liam supposes that the meaning is similar enough. Honestly, Liam’s a little offended that she’d assumed that he’d been the one to screw up. Except, well. He had been.

Theo’s grin lasts a bit longer this time. “Sounds about right.”

“ _Hey_ ,” Liam protests. “I was just trying to give you some space. _You’re_ the one who went AWOL for a week. I don’t know why I should get the blame for it.”

“Not my fault your mom likes me better,” Theo says with a shrug. His smile has reached his eyes now, an undertone of laughter in his voice, and Liam simultaneously hates him and—doesn’t. He’s suddenly grateful for the bag of groceries keeping his hands occupied.

“She does not.”

“Evidence says otherwise,” Theo says, insufferable grin still in place.

Liam glares at him. “Just because she was worried doesn’t mean she likes you better.”

Theo’s face softens a little, the teasing grin falling away to be replaced with something more uncertain. “She—your mom was worried about me?”

The ache in Liam’s chest resurfaces without warning. “Yes,” he says, unable to be anything other than completely honest in the face of Theo’s sudden and unexpected vulnerability. “It’s a pretty dangerous town. She worries when people don’t check in.” He pauses. “So do I.”

A muscle twitches in Theo’s cheek. “I know that, I just didn’t—” He breaks off, pressing his lips together. “Tell her I’m sorry, ok? I’ll come over this week.”

“Promise?”

“Yes, Liam.” A soft, unfamiliar smile is blossoming over Theo’s face. “I promise.”

*

Theo is as good as his word. On Wednesday afternoon when Liam gets home from lacrosse practice, he finds Theo sitting at the counter in the kitchen, eating a sandwich and chatting to Jenna as she loads the dishwasher. There’s the welcoming smell of cookies baking as Liam watches from the doorway, taking in the brief moment of unguarded contentment on Theo’s face that he manages to catch when the chimera thinks no-one is looking. His hair is damp, curling a little at the ends, and as Liam moves closer he can smell a mixture of coconut shampoo and his mom’s favoured brand of fabric softener.

There’s something about it, the sight of Theo soft and relaxed and smelling like home, that fills Liam with a comforting warmth. He hadn’t realised quite how much he’d missed it until now.

If Liam hadn’t thought his mother was brilliant before, the way that Jenna has gradually and skilfully reduced the size of Theo’s orbit around their home would have been the deciding factor. It’s partly why she’d noticed Theo’s absence last week so easily. It’s been a slow process: moving from convincing Theo to wait for Liam in the hallway rather than on the doorstep to offering him a drink and snack in the kitchen while Liam deliberately dragged his heels getting ready; from _accidentally_ making enough food for Theo to stay for dinner to actually inviting him for dinner in advance; from timing their movie marathons so that Theo is practically falling asleep and has little choice but to stay the night to Theo staying over on Friday nights just becoming as much a part of movie night as the pizza and popcorn.

“Good practice?” Theo asks, when he turns to look at Liam, his face arranged into a more neutral expression. He tips his head to one side, studying Liam for a moment with a slight wrinkle of his nose. “Bad practice,” he decides, answering his own question while Liam’s still trying to work out when exactly Theo became quite so familiar with his schedule. These last few weeks have been full of surprises.

Liam slides onto the stool next to Theo’s with a sigh. “How did you guess?”

“I think that probably qualifies as a stupid question,” his mom says as she starts to make Liam a sandwich of his own. “It’s obvious to _me_ , and I don’t have werewolf senses at my disposal.”

“Your shoulders are tense, and you looked like you were limping,” Theo tells him anyway. “And you smell angry.”

“I’m always angry,” Liam quips in an over-the-top throaty growl. The reference earns him an amused twitch on the right corner of Theo’s mouth, at the same time as Jenna deposits a plate in front of Liam and affectionately ruffles his hair. Liam leans in to her hand a little, and she squeezes an arm around his shoulders and kisses his temple as she moves behind him.

“So what happened?” Theo asks, watching as Liam opens his sandwich and removes the slices of tomato that Jenna seems to live in hope of him actually eating one day. “I thought things were working out ok with Nolan?”

“They are,” he says, frustrated. “It’s just—” he stops, and then mentally rewinds the conversation a little. “You really want to know?” He’s surprised. Again.

Theo shrugs. “Wouldn’t ask if I didn’t,” he says lightly. “Although I’m not promising to understand any of it.”

“It’s not Nolan,” Liam explains. “It’s everyone else. Some of them are actually pretty good players, but get them on a field together and they fall apart.”

“So you need to get them playing as a team?” Theo asks. Liam nods, his mouth full of sandwich. “Isn’t that your job? As captain.”

“I guess,” Liam says reluctantly. “I just don’t know how I’m supposed to do that.” He can’t remember the last time he missed Scott’s guidance quite so much.

“Maybe you need to get them to be a team off the field first,” Theo says, as he swallows the last of his own sandwich. “Like you do with the pack. Give them a stake in it—something to fight for. Can’t play as a team if you’re not all on the same page.”

“Huh,” Liam says. “That’s not a bad idea.”

“I do have them occasionally,” Theo says. “Not that anyone ever listens.”

Liam opens his mouth to argue, but the front door opens again and draws his attention instead. He’s lost track of his dad’s shifts again, it seems.

David drops his bag next to the coat stand, and comes into the kitchen with his shoes still on. “I don’t want to alarm anyone,” he says, his voice never deviating from its usual calm balance as he presses an easy kiss to the top of Jenna’s head. “But there does seem to be a group of children camped out on the front lawn.”

“It’s Theo’s cult,” Liam says cheerfully. He’d seen them for himself when he’d arrived home, and had stopped for a round of high-fives and excited chatter. Apparently more skateboarding lessons had been promised.

Theo groans and drops his head onto his folded arms on the counter, mumbling something into the sleeves of his hoodie that sounds vaguely like _I hate you_.

“Well I think it’s lovely,” Jenna says firmly as she slides the baking tray out of the oven and then uses her knee to nudge the door closed. She makes her way back towards the island, slapping the back of Liam’s hand with the spatula when he reaches for the cookies and then sliding one off onto the empty plate where Theo’s sandwich had been. “Just let that cool down a bit,” she advises him, and then starts to transfer the rest of the cookies onto a cooling rack. “You should think about volunteering at the community centre, Theo,” she adds. “You know they’re always looking for extra help.”

Liam huffs and rolls his eyes—his mom is always trying to rope him into helping out at various places so it’s no surprise that she’s doing it to Theo now too—but then he chances a quick look at the other boy.

Theo is looking down at the cookie, and there’s a strange expression on his face, a grimace that looks a little like he’s trying to swallow a smile that his mouth is forming without his permission. Suddenly, it seems less like his mom trying to collect volunteers and more like another step in her carefully staged plan to nudge Theo into making a place for himself here.

It sounds like a great idea.

*

They fall quickly back into old routines: Theo comes over on Friday for movie night, and for three straight Fridays after that. On the fourth Friday he agrees to sleep in the guestroom without any effort at all, and he stays long enough on Saturday morning to eat breakfast with them all instead of his old trick of sneaking out before the rest of the house was awake. It’s slow progress, but it’s something.

Midway through the following week Jenna arrives home while Liam is chopping vegetables for dinner, and confides to him that Theo had shown up at her youth group the day before. There’s warm pride in her voice as she tells him, and maybe for the first time Liam can appreciate the fulfilling side of the job she does.

“He mostly just cleared away at the end,” she says, sitting at the counter with her hands curled around her cup of tea. “But it’s a start. I really want to get him helping with the kids—he’s so good with them.”

“I know,” Liam agrees, throwing the last of the vegetables into the crockpot. “I just wish he could see that.”

“Give him time,” his mom says gently. “It’s hard work, for someone to change their perception of themselves. You should know that better than anyone.”

It’s a fair point. How many times over the years has she had to piece his self-esteem back together, after some incident at school or another; how many hours has she spent driving him to therapy and tirelessly working on self-control techniques with him; how many evenings and weekends has David given up to practice lacrosse and teach him all the little tricks he remembered from college. And how many times has all that work seemed pointless, when he lost his temper _again, Liam?_ , when the adrenaline of a match got the better of him, when Scott had bitten him and he’d spent months avoiding her because he couldn’t bear to lie to her about it.

He’s gotten pretty lucky, all told. He needs to remember that more often.

“Yeah, well I had you and Dad to help,” he says now. “If I didn’t—”

Her smile is warm and reassuring. “And Theo has you. I don’t think you can underestimate the importance of that.”

“Maybe,” he says. He drops the vegetable scraps into the garbage disposal and starts clearing his utensils into the dishwasher. “I don’t know how much I’m really helping.”

She pats the seat of the stool next to her, and when he sits she gives his hand an encouraging squeeze. “Take it from an expert. You’re doing a great job, Liam. Which is not to say...” She pauses, and he watches as she carefully considers her word choice. When she speaks again, it’s with a calm and deliberate tone that he’s heard her use at work. “I was really worried about you this past year. You seemed so distant, and on edge all the time. It was like you were pulling away. It probably sounds crazy, but when you finally told us what had been going on, it was such a relief.”

He looks away, his throat suddenly tight. He had known, of course, how worried she’d been. He had just thought it was better, or safer, or easier not to tell her. Not to let her down. Not to add to everything she already had on her plate.

The hardest part had been the telling, in the end. When he’d finally had no option. When the tension in the town overflowed, when he’d had to leave suddenly and without warning. He had waited for judgement or disappointment and had received neither. Instead, his mom had hugged him tighter than she had in years, her head only reaching his shoulder and yet the closeness still making him feel as safe and loved as she had when he was a kid. _I’m so glad you told us_ , she’d said.

“Liam,” she says gently, cutting into his thoughts. “I’m not trying to make you feel bad. I understand why you didn’t tell us earlier.”

“I should’ve,” he admits. “I should have—I should have known that you would always support me, no matter what. I’m sorry I didn’t realise it sooner.”

Her face creases a little in obvious concern. “What’s brought this on?”

“I’ve just been thinking.” He looks down at her hand, still a reassuring warmth against his. “About Theo, and everything that happened to him. He didn’t have someone looking out for him back then.”

“No,” she agrees softly. “I don’t think he did.”

He bites his lip, before asking the question that’s been at the back of his mind for months. “Do you believe that people can change?”

“I think that they can if you let them. If they want to, and if they have the right tools.” She catches his eye. “The right people supporting them.”

“Mom…” he says, and then stops. Hesitates. _The hardest part had been the telling_. “Me and Theo, we—” He stops again, searching for the right words.

“It’s ok,” she says and just like that he feels it, the weight lifting. A weight he hadn’t even realised he’d been carrying, really. “Whatever happens with you and Theo, it will be what’s right for both of you. It isn’t your responsibility, to fix Theo or anyone else. I would never expect that of you. I want you to know that. But seeing you with him, or the rest of your fr—your _pack_.” Her emphasis on the word is still a little unnatural, even several months after she finally learned the truth, but it’s not negative or dismissive. It’s more like she understands the importance of it, and wants to get it right. She cups his face gently in her hands, and smiles again. “You’re a great leader, honey. And a wonderful friend. They’re lucky to have you.”

He scrunches his face up and squirms away, the impact of the compliment leaving him somehow both pleased and awkward at the same time. “Thanks, Mom.”

“Ok, serious talk over,” she declares with a grin. “Tell me more about your day.”

He rolls his eyes. “Ugh.” She waits expectantly, and so he tells her about a mostly crappy day—spent on a math test he had failed, being last in line for lunch, and an English Lit assignment that he’s really not understanding—which had been slightly improved by feeling like he and Nolan had finally made a breakthrough with the lacrosse team.

In return, she updates him on the comings-and-goings of the community centre, who’s still working there and what’s changed since he last visited, and he has the strange realisation that it was over a year ago. He used to spend whole evenings there when she was working, sitting in the little office doing homework and being fed candy by doting old ladies. It had been a huge part of his life, even when he had started high school and really been too old to need somewhere to hang out after school instead of the empty house. He can’t even remember when or why he had just seemed to—stop going. Maybe around the same time he started avoiding his mom.

“You know they’re doing kids’ martial arts down there now?” she’s saying when he tunes back in. “Maybe you could think about helping out.”

“Oh yeah?” His interest is piqued despite himself. “What type?”

“Is there more than one?” she asks, mock-innocent, and then laughs as he swats at her with the dish towel. “Karate, I think. Tuesdays and Thursdays.”

“Yeah, ok,” he says. “Maybe I will.”

*

He thinks it over that weekend. For all he tries to avoid his mom’s usual efforts to get him involved in things, in this instance he realises that he might actually want to. He’d done almost eight years of karate as a kid, one of his mom’s many attempts at finding something to funnel his energy into, and he’d only really given it up when he’d started taking lacrosse more seriously and couldn’t fit them both in. He quite likes the idea of taking it up again, even in a small capacity. Plus, he thinks he might actually like working with kids. Despite the _skateboarding_ of it all, he’d really enjoyed his afternoon at the skate park last month with Ava and her friends. He just doesn’t want his mom to think she’s won, is all—which, when he finally drills it down to that being the thing holding him off, seems patently ridiculous because his mom is awesome and almost always entirely right.

So that’s how Liam finds himself heading down to the community centre early on Tuesday evening to meet the karate instructor before the first class. It’s still mostly light, the day just starting to go grey around the edges.

It’s also how he spots some sort of argument going on at the reception desk, a group of guys crowded together on one side with Jenna’s friend Maggie on the other side. It doesn’t take Liam to take stock of the situation: right in the middle, the loudest guy is heavy-set, with dark hair that’s starting to thin around his temples and a ridiculous-looking moustache. He’s very obviously the main offender. In response, Maggie is speaking to all of them in the same calm tone that Liam’s heard his mom use more than once. It’s clearly not working. At all.

Theo is standing off to one side of the desk, stony-faced but with something apprehensive in his eyes. He’s tense, and it shows most in his shoulders: they’re pulled back to make him seem taller, bigger. His heart is racing so fast that Liam has to remind himself that he’s the only one who can hear it.

He instinctively moves closer to Theo, around the back of the crowd. They don’t even notice him, too focused on whatever has them so riled up.

Theo doesn’t acknowledge him either.

“Don’t act like you don't know what he is!” the main guy is shouting at Maggie. “We told you already—there ain’t no place for his kind here.”

“He needs to be kept away from our kids,” one of the other guys butts in. “How are we supposed to believe he’s safe around them?”

“Yeah,” a third one adds. This one is lean, with sinewy arms and his head closely shaved. He smells like stale alcohol. “We all know what happened to his sister in that creek.”

Theo makes a strangled noise in his throat and steps backwards until he hits the wall behind. If anyone else notices, they don’t acknowledge it. Liam is torn between not taking his eyes off the conflict and reaching out to him, and finds a sort of middle ground in stepping slightly to the side so that he’s in front of Theo. Behind him, the chimera’s breathing is shallow.

The anger starts as a prickle under Liam’s skin. It's familiar, the way it twists his stomach, wringing out a cold acidic rage that seeps into his bloodstream until he's poised, muscles tensed and fingers itching, waiting for the final trigger.

It comes in the form of the first guy reaching for Theo, his fingers grasping. “Get out of here, mutt.”

Liam grabs his hand first, squeezing until he feels the resistance of bone about to break. “Don’t touch him,” he growls as he steps forward and uses the leverage to twist the guy’s arm back.

The guy’s face crumples in a mix of pain and anger. “This one too,” he calls to the others as Liam releases him. The rest of them take a step forward, and Liam unsheathes his claws, gets ready to fight.

And is immediately blocked by a flash of lime green, and then a small figure standing in front of him.

“Hey, mister!” Ava’s face is flushed red, her fists clenched. “You leave Theo alone.”

“Get out of the way, kid,” the second guy tells her, still trying to manoeuvre around to get to Theo.

“I will not,” she says, and as she does another half-dozen kids swarm behind her to form a protective barrier in front of Theo. “We’re not going to let you hurt him.”

“Seriously?” The third guy is staring at Maggie in disbelief. “You’re letting them defend that monster?”

“Don’t call him that!” one of the other kids shouts, at the same time as another cries: “Theo’s not a monster, you bully!”

Ava pulls herself as tall as she can, and puts her hands firmly on her hips. “You need to get out of here,” she tells them. Her voice is loud and confident, and doesn’t waver even to Liam’s supernatural ears. “Because Theo is a superhero, and _I’m_ his best friend.”

There’s a sudden, inexplicable tightness in Liam’s chest. He chances a quick look back at Theo; he seems frozen in place, staring at Ava with what looks like horrified disbelief.

Maggie steps forward, ushering the kids behind her. “I think it’s time you left.”

The main guy stares at her, his mouth opening and closing like a goldfish. Behind him, his crowd of supporters are now looking decidedly uncomfortable. Some of them are already backing away in an attempt to distance themselves from the situation, edging towards the doors.

“C’mon Rick,” the skinny one says. “Let’s go.”

“This isn’t over,” Rick hisses at Liam, and then he follows his guys out. Liam strains hard enough to hear them head down the street, grumbling and cursing at the town’s acceptance of _those fucking freaks_. He has a sharp twinge of disappointment. So things aren’t as settled as they’d hoped, then. Maybe it had been too good to be true.

It’s a problem for later, he decides. Once he’s dealt with the more immediate matter at hand.

He turns to the kids, finding them in an excited huddle sharing the thrill of their success.

“That was really brave, you guys,” he tells them.

Ava puffs her chest out a little. “We started an anti-bullying club at school. Zero tolerance!”

“Yeah,” the girl to her left says. “No matter how big they are.”

“Even grownups,” Ava adds, with a wide toothy grin.

“Well,” Maggie intervenes sternly, reminding Liam almost viscerally of his hours here as a kid. “That was very dangerous. I don’t think you should make a habit of it.”

Ava nods, looking barely contrite. “Ok. Only in emergencies.” They stream back into the sports hall before Maggie can chastise them any further.

She turns to Liam with a sigh. “Why do children never listen?”

Liam beams at her. “Because they always think they know best. And sometimes they’re right.” His tone turns more serious. “Have you been having lots of trouble like this?”

“I’m so sorry you had to see that,” Maggie says, and then sighs again. “There’s been some bad feeling. Nothing like this though, before tonight.”

“I had no idea people still felt like this,” he says. “It seemed like after everything that happened—”

“Hey, don’t you pay any attention. They’re just bigots, they hate anyone that doesn’t fit into their neat little boxes. If it wasn’t you boys it’d be someone else.”

“Maybe,” Liam says, but it burns anyway. Another reminder that no matter what, they’re always set apart from everyone else.

He turns to Theo, and finds an empty space where the chimera had been. “ _Shit_ ,” he mutters, and then winces. “Sorry,” he says to Maggie.

She waves him off. “I hear way worse in my house before we even get to breakfast. Go. Find your boy.” There’s a playful glint in her eye.

Liam follows Theo’s scent to the back fire exit, and out into the alley where the big dustbins are. It’s just starting to get darker, and the fluorescent lights make the alley a strange contrast of light and shadow.

Theo’s almost reached the street when Liam spots him.

“Hey!” he calls after Theo. “Where are you going?”

Theo stops, but doesn’t turn around. “They were right,” he says quietly, his voice thick with emotion. “I shouldn’t be here.”

“That’s crap and you know it,” Liam shouts back. Theo’s shoulders sink, just a little, and then he turns to look at Liam. His eyes are glassy, and his face is twisted into an ugly sneer.

“Is it?” he asks, and it sounds almost cruel. A bit like his voice is sneering too. “You heard them. They weren’t wrong. I am a monster. It was—” His chin wobbles, pulling his mouth straight for a brief moment before he takes control of it again. “I shouldn’t be here,” he repeats, but it’s quieter this time. Resigned.

“You have every right to be here,” Liam says as he gets closer. “My mom invited you, because she saw how great you were with kids. And you heard what Ava said. Doesn’t that count for something?”

Theo laughs, bitter and humourless. “A _hero_ ,” he says. It’s scornful, like just saying the word aloud makes him feel ill. “That’s never been what I am, Liam.”

“I disagree. Maybe not always—” he ignores Theo’s derisive snort “—but since you came back. You’ve done so many good things since then.”

“ _Selfish_ things,” Theo corrects him. “Saving my own skin.”

“Oh really? Like helping Scott against Mr Douglas? Or saving my ass at the school? _Being the bait_?” It’s a low blow, but it hits exactly how Liam intended it. Theo’s heart jumps and his expression softens, just a smidge. “And everything since then?” Liam persists. “That was all just to save yourself. The sheriff station and the zoo and the hospital. You had some ulterior motive? And all the pack meetings and patrols? Family dinners and movie nights? Was that all selfish too?”

Theo looks stricken: all the scorn he’d been wearing has faded from his face and he’s staring at Liam, slack-jawed and chalk-white. “Yes,” he says, barely audible. Shame is radiating off him in waves thick enough to make Liam want to choke.

Liam takes a step back. “What?” His mind is racing, reviewing everything that’s happened since the War ended. Everything he thought was bringing them closer. Everything that had been building between them, or so he thought. The acid-burn in his stomach reignites.

Theo looks down the alley and then back at Liam, like he’s weighing his options. There’s a desperate sort of panic in his eyes, now he’s backed into an unintended corner. He’s an animal more used to a cage, Liam remembers. He wonders what it feels like, that sudden freedom. He digs his claws into his palms, barely wincing as the skin breaks.

Theo doesn’t move.

Liam focuses on the smell of blood.  “Why did you stay here then?” His voice sounds alien to his own ears, like it’s coming from somewhere else. He had really believed—

“Because it was _selfish_ ,” Theo says eventually, raking a hand through his hair.

“You said that already.”

“Because it’s true,” Theo says. He sounds tired now. “I didn’t stay in Beacon Hills to help people. I didn’t have much of a choice at first, and then it was just easier to stay. Not like I had anywhere else to go. And even if—” He blinks, squeezing his eyes tightly shut for just a second too long. “It had been years. I didn’t know how to be by myself. At least there were people I knew here.”

Something squeezes at Liam’s chest. “Theo—”

Theo keeps talking as if he hasn’t heard him. His voice is quiet and steady. “After that I stayed because it made me feel good being here, being a part of something. I liked the way it made me feel. Like maybe I could be someone...better, I guess.” He’s not even looking at Liam; instead his eyes are directed somewhere past Liam’s shoulder, his gaze unfocused.

“Theo,” Liam says again, careful and gentle. “Everything that made you feel good _was_ helping people. You helped me, you helped Scott. You helped the whole town, just like we did.”

Theo’s focus snaps back to Liam’s face. “Didn't you hear what I just said? It wasn’t about helping people. I was helping myself.”

“And now?”

Theo's smile is lopsided, almost sad. “The most selfish of all. Because of you.”

Liam blinks in surprise. “Me?”

“Yeah. Because I couldn't imagine not seeing you. That's why I come to pack meetings, and why I agreed to that patrol rota. It gave me a reason to see you. And I got to kid myself that maybe…” He drifts off. “It doesn't matter anyway. I'm gonna pack my shit tonight.”

Liam’s entire body is tingling, electricity racing under his skin as everything Theo just confessed is processed and untangled and deciphered. It’s like every nerve ending is singing.

He takes a step forward. Theo doesn’t move, but his shoulders are tense and his eyes are narrowed slightly. Liam reaches for Theo’s hand, tangling their fingers until their wrists are pressed together, his own pulse deliberately steady while Theo’s is racing. “I want you to be here,” Liam says, firmly. “I don’t care why you stayed before. It doesn’t matter. It just matters that you’re still here.”

Theo’s jaw flexes, once and then twice. Like he’s considering Liam’s words, mulling them over. Liam’s stomach twists over on itself. He holds out hesitant fingers, pressing them to Theo’s face when he doesn’t flinch away. He explores the harsh prickle of evening stubble against his fingertips, the soft contrast of bare cheekbone under his thumb. Theo is trembling with the effort of holding still. Liam grips his hand a little tighter. To reassure Theo. To ground himself. To give himself the courage to lean that little bit closer, so that their noses slide together, so that Theo’s eyes widen and then flutter closed, so that he can press his lips against Theo’s, soft and deliberate and almost unbearably brief.

It’s...not what he expected. Theo’s lips are a little dry, and he’s not really kissing back. But the acid in Liam’s stomach seems to dissipate, and is replaced with something warm and happy. It feels right.

He pulls back, opens his eyes to find Theo already looking back at him. The chimera’s face is slightly flushed, his eyes dark. He looks half dazed teenage boy, half startled animal. A little wild, a little uncertain.

 _Beautiful_ , Liam thinks. He looks beautiful.

“Why’d you stop?” Theo says, finally. His heartbeat has levelled into a regular thump, albeit a little heavier than usual, and his voice is raspy, barely above a whisper. Something about it makes Liam’s skin tingle, right at the base of his spine.

“I just—wanted to make sure,” he says, almost too quickly. “That you wanted—”

Theo grins, wide and sudden. It makes his eyes look like they’re dancing. “I’ve been wanting to for months,” he says, pulling Liam closer with a tug of their entwined fingers. “Since—since I don’t even know when. Since the hospital. Since the zoo. Since you jumped on that stupid horse—”

Liam covers his face with his free hand. “Don’t remind me.”

“You were just... _fearless_ ,” Theo continues. “Every time. Fighting back, even when it was pointless, even when you didn’t stand a chance. You made me wish I had been braver, back then. Maybe things would have been different.”

“You can’t think like that,” Liam says softly. “What they did to you—that wasn’t your fault.”

“No,” Theo agrees. “But what came after, that was. And I thought that there was no hope for me. Until you saved me. And then you showed me that being good, it’s a choice. A series of choices. And I kept making them until—it just felt normal again. I can never repay you for that.”

“I would never—”

“No, I know. But I want to say thank you anyway. So that we can start this without it feeling like I owe you.”

Liam slides his arm around Theo’s waist, taking a final step forward so that their chests are pressed together and his thigh nudges against Theo’s. “So, we’re starting something?” he asks against Theo’s cheek, only half-teasing.

Theo breathes out a laugh. “I hope so. Either that or I just bared my soul for nothing.”

“It wasn’t for nothing,” Liam says, and then he presses a kiss to Theo’s cheek, his jaw, his ear before pulling back enough to kiss his mouth again. This time Theo smiles and meets him, his thumb stroking the line of Liam’s cheekbone as his fingers curl around his ear, pulling Liam in until their mouths slide together.

It’s still cautious, still new and burgeoning, but it’s better this time, more like them. Theo takes the lead and then pulls back; Liam leans in to kiss him again, licking tentatively at the seam of Theo’s mouth and getting a thrilling shiver when Theo makes a noise in his throat; Theo gets his revenge by stroking gentle fingers against the sensitive skin behind Liam’s ear, and then letting his thumb trail down Liam’s throat.

They could lose hours out here, Liam thinks.

“Oh, _gross_ ,” says a voice from behind them. Theo tenses in Liam’s arms, until they turn to find Ava watching them from the fire door, her arms crossed tightly and looking thoroughly unimpressed.

Theo laughs, unexpectedly. “Your fault for watching, kid,” he says with a grin.

“I was _not_ watching,” she insists. “I was just looking for you. I need you to show me how to score a basket. Dylan says girls can’t play basketball and I’m gonna prove him wrong.”

Theo looks back at Liam, his face apologetic. “Do you mind if—?”

“Go,” Liam says with a wide smile, taking a step back. “We can walk home after?”

“I’d like that,” Theo says. He looks almost shy, his eyes bright.

He heads back towards the door, ruffling Ava’s hair a little when he reaches her. “C’mon, kid. Let’s teach that dirtbag a lesson.”

They’re almost back inside, Ava a step ahead of Theo, when he turns back to look at Liam over his shoulder. There’s something new about his smile, something free.

Like something’s starting.


End file.
